Analysis of dream contents of patients with anxiety disorders and their comparison with dreams of healthy participants.

Abstract

Although anxiety disorders are well investigated, little is known about the dream content of patients suffering from anxiety disorders. The aim of the present study was to investigate specific characteristics manifested in dreams of patients with clinical anxiety disorders and to compare them with dreams of healthy persons. The sample consisted of 38 participants with anxiety disorders and a matched healthy control group of 38 individuals. As soon as they woke up in the morning, each participant filled in written dream diaries for 21 days and thus provided written dream logs. Dream reports of the participants were analyzed according to the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) system of content analysis of dreams. The results of our study showed that the presence of an anxiety disorder resulted in significant differences in dream contents, compared to the dreams of healthy individuals. Dreams of anxiety patients contained more characters, higher numbers of different activities, social and aggressive interactions, lower numbers of friendly interactions, higher frequencies of failures, misfortunes and negative emotions, and a lower prevalence of successes, good fortune and positive emotions. In addition, they had higher numbers of locations and settings, had more negative evaluations and assessments, and were characterized by a more intense and wider range of different modifiers. The results thus indicate a clear difference in the content and structure of dreams in anxiety patients compared to healthy persons, although anxiety themes are not always prevalent in their dreams.

The Mental Health of Frontline Chinese Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This study aims to understand the dream experience of frontline HCW during the COVID-19 pandemic in a particular context of China. We identified six themes through a thematic analysis of their dreams: warning, escape, alienation of HCW, gender inequality, archetypal-mythological dreams, and negative emotions, which share some similarities with previous studies of pandemic dreams in other different cultures (Borghi et al, 2021; Giovanardi et al, 2022; Rimsh & Pietrowsky, 2021; Schredl & Bulkeley, 2020) and exhibit some Chinese characteristics at the same time. Guided by threat simulation theory and analytical psychology theories, the present study presents results that support the dream continuity hypothesis and contribute a new insight into understanding the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on HCW in Chinese culture.…”

The Value of Subjectivity in the Study of Dreams: An Alternative Methodology in a Quantitative Field

“…This scale includes ten general categories (e.g., characters, activities, emotions, settings, etc.) and uses a binary measuring level (Domhoff & Schneider, 2015;Rimsh & Pietrowsky, 2021). Data obtained through this scale usually tells the researcher which types of images are predominant in a specific population.…”

Evidence of an active role of dreaming in emotional memory processing shows that we dream to forget

“…Participants performed an emotional picture task before and after a night of sleep and completed a dream report upon waking. We examined how dream recall and content affects performance while controlling for levels of depression, anxiety, and emotion regulation, as these factors play a role in dream recall and dream content 46 – 48 .…”